


And Gather It All

by night_reveals



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/F, Ficlet, New York City, Prompt Fic, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 11:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_reveals/pseuds/night_reveals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fuck his absent ass, anyway."</p><p>Jane and Darcy don't take being left behind too kindly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Gather It All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beanarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/gifts).



When Jane hears the news about New York, she’s swaddled in an oversized t-shirt and perched on one of the rickety wooden stools that line the kitchen bar. It’s six am, still mostly dark outside, the city of Traunsee stumbling to wakefulness much like herself. 

“‘Sup, boss,” comes a voice from down the hall. Darcy walks in, her own sleep tee hitting her knees. She’s paler than she should be, even considering that this is the earliest she’s woken in years. 

Jane notes as much to Darcy, then sips her coffee idly. They have a lot of work to do today; the two head scientists she shares the observatory’s main telescope with are poking at her to divulge exactly what she’ll be doing with her funding for the year, and their meeting is in the afternoon. More importantly, the upcoming transit of Venus is being preceded by multiple smaller, less flashy phenomena that Jane wants to witness first-hand.

“You check your phone?” asks Darcy. Her voice is off.

Jane turns, wiping under her eyes where yesterday’s makeup has rubbed off. “No. Why?”

“Just check.” Darcy shrugs like it’s no big deal, her own smart phone clutched in one hand. It hasn’t stopped vibrating for a while, Jane suddenly realizes.

It takes Jane ten minutes to find her own phone in the mess of her apartment-cum-lab, and its battery is dead when she finally does, drained from her late night carelessness. While she’s been flailing, Darcy’s opened her laptop, which she sleeps next to at all times, purportedly so that she can “update her twitter on the reg.” It boots in a few seconds, open already to a news site’s slideshow. Darcy waves Jane over, hand flapping in uncharacteristic frustration.

It’s New York City, destroyed.

Together they flick through the pictures, silent and scared. Darcy’s paleness must be catching, because Jane can swear she feels the blood in her face flee downwards, rushing to her chest to try and keep her alive, to keep her heart beating even though it wants to stop. Suddenly Jane feels alone, as if she’s in deep space with no air to breathe, her lungs shrinking to the size of a child’s fist. One picture, next picture, next picture.

“Wait!” she says, voice hoarse. 

Darcy and her bend over the laptop, the many grainy shots from New Yorkers’ cell phone videos deceptively bright on the screen, whitewashing Darcy and Jane’s faces. 

“That’s him.” Jane points to a red, white, and blue blur on one still.

“Captain America,” whispers Darcy, awed. Then, in a dead tone, “I’d hit it.”

A year ago Jane might have take offense at Darcy’s comment -- people died here, lots of people, and they didn’t even have the dignity of dying at a fellow human’s hand -- but she knows now when Darcy is talking just to talk and when Darcy is _speaking_.

They’ve avoided the written reports so far, too stunned or simply not courageous enough for any details, to see what truly happened. But the next picture has a caption, a list reading from left to right.

Aloud, Darcy reads, “‘An unidentified woman, Captain America, an unidentified man, an unidentified man, Iron Man, and the monster known as ‘The Hulk’ face off against the army that invaded New York on Saturday. _New York Times_ cameraman Mick Blue died moments after this shot was taken, crushed by a piece of a falling tower on 10th and Broadway.’ Woah.”

The three people might be unidentified to the newspaper, but Jane knows at least one of them.

“Thor,” says Darcy disbelievingly, giving voice to Jane’s thoughts.

Jane’s throat is parched. It hasn’t rained for six weeks in Traunsee, all the flowers dying in their pots, wilting under the rare sun. That is what Jane’s throat is like, scratchy, sick. He’d sent her a message saying that he wouldn’t be back. Not in her lifetime.

But that’s him. Unidentified man #2.

Jane chugs her coffee.

“Whoa, whoa.” Darcy tugs the mug away from Jane just as she finishes.

“I need a real drink,” says Jane, placing a trembling hand over her mouth.

“As long as you don’t throw your mug on the ground, you can have whatever you want.”

A frantic thought comes, and Jane raises her hand to her forehead, trying to think straight. “It’s over? Did they say it’s over?” 

“Yeah, yeah. People are tweeting about it right now in Brooklyn.” Darcy looks down at her vibrating phone and bites her lip. “I guess they can’t sleep. The sirens are too loud.”

“Jesus.” Jane sits back down, collapsing into a rarely used camping chair around their small, cheap card table.

“Some god or other, at least,” mumbles Darcy, still flicking through pictures. 

“He probably saved a lot of lives.”

“Maybe.” Darcy shrugs. “They’re saying there was something else. A bomb, maybe. It’s all confused.” Darcy continues, listing unofficial death counts and damage estimates, talking about how Congress is already fighting about the military response to the aliens.

The shock hasn’t worn off at all, yet, but Jane’s systems are coming back online, her brain revving up to deal with the problems before her, to compartmentalize and contextualize them. It’s then she knows, with a certainty she rarely feels, being a woman of science, that there is something more going on.

“Darcy.”

“Yeah?”

“We got the grant money last month, right?”

“Uh. Well, technically you got the grant money. But yeah.”

“From something Selvig had submitted us for a long time ago.”

Across from Jane, Darcy turns on her kitchen stool, eyes narrowing a little. She can’t keep up with Jane when it comes to looking at the stars, but she’s got a head for politics. 

“We haven’t heard from him that whole time, though,” points out Darcy, seeming to already know where Jane is going. “And he hasn’t skyped me back once. He always skypes me back. You think this has something to do with it?” Suddenly Darcy turns, fingers flying across her laptop keyboard. “There was something, something...here it is: ‘Some residents reported a strange, tunnel-like fixture in the skies of New York for an hour during the fighting,and though no US Army sources have confirmed, the army of invaders appeared to be coming from -- ”

“A gate! A gateway to another world.” Jane rises from her chair, seething. “So, aliens from another universe and Thor appear right as we’re shipped off the the middle-of-nowhere?”

“Dude,” says Darcy, sounding offended at the world. “That’s just not cool. There is no way this stuff isn’t connected. You think...you think he had us sent us here to wait it out? He’s obviously in cahoots with that group.”

Jane doesn’t have to ask who ‘he’ is. “Fuck his absent ass, anyway,” she says, grabbing her coat and wallet. “Darcy, get us some tickets to New Jersey. We’re going home.”

Half an hour later, Darcy lets go of her grip on Jane’s hand, gasping in horror. The taxi driver looks in the mirror but quickly puts his eyes back on the road, obviously terrified of the two women he’s chauffeuring.

“What? What?” asks Jane, slightly frantic.

Darcy turns to face Jane, disbelief writ in her eyes. “I forgot my taser!”


End file.
